What's the difference between being dead, and just not knowing you're alive?

Property damage is so much easier to live with than murder.

How do you say 'We come in peace' when the very words are an act of war?

But when the flash flood crosses your path, when the lion leaps at you from the grasses, advanced self-awareness is an unaffordable indulgence. The brain stem does its best.

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: You hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.

Humans didn't really fight over skin tone or ideology; those were just handy cues for kin-selection purposes. Ultimately it always came down to bloodlines and limited resources.

What's the survival value of obsessing on a sunset?